about ‘self,’ we (i.e. the onions) fall into the belief that there is something there under the onions and the rope, and on looking we see there is nothing of the kind. But on looking we see even more than this; for the rope of the onions is a rope of straw, and that is, being interpreted, no rope at all, but the fiction of a rope. The onions keep together because of the laws of association of onions; and because of these laws it is, that the mutual juxtaposition of the onions engenders in them the belief in a rope, and the consequent foolish ideas of a self, which we see in all their foolishness, when we perceive, first, that there is nothing but a rope, and then that the rope is nothing at all. The only thing which after all is hard to see is this, that we ourselves, who apprehend the illusion, are ourselves the illusion which is apprehended by us;[1] and perhaps, on the theory of ‘relativity,’ in order to know a fiction you yourself must be the fiction you know; but it all is hard to understand, especially to a mind which is little ‘analytical’ and, I begin to fear, not at all ‘inductive.’
We can see that a stream is a flux, and that the wisp which plays on it has really no more of permanence than the stream; but how that wisp is ever to think about these things, and to delude itself into the belief, and to publish the theory, that it can not help thinking of itself as one being, and that yet after all it is nothing but a wisp; to see how this is seems really impossible. The only way to represent it is to picture a delusion, which is nothing but a delusion, and which, after belief that it is not a delusion, has at length found out that really it is a delusion. And since this, to the non-philosophical mind, appears meaningless nonsense; and since this is the conclusion to which ‘inductive’ psychology, if we carry it out, seems necessarily to lead,[2] I do not see much reason to think that the premises of that psychology
- ↑ Mr. Bain collects that the mind is a collection. Has he ever thought who collects Mr. Bain?
- ↑ I am perfectly aware that it is possible to inherit both premises and conclusions, and then, while holding to the premises, to ignore or refuse to accept the conclusions, so far as they are found to be inconvenient. When a fact stopped the way of Hume’s conclusions, he banished it as a fiction. The late Mr. Mill’s was a mind of a different order. Starting from premises the same, with the same fact before him, which gave the lie to his whole psychological theory, he could not ignore it, he could not recognize it, he would not call it a fiction; so he put it aside as a ‘final inexplicability,’ and thought, I suppose, that by covering it with a phrase he got rid of its existence. But against his adversary (p. 561) he expressed himself otherwise. ‘He’ (the theorist) ‘is not entitled to frame a theory from one class of phenomena, extend it to another class which it does not fit, and excuse himself by saying that if we cannot make it fit, it is because ultimate facts are inexplicable.’
